


savoir-faire

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf), poppunkpadfoot (StormVandal)



Series: brinkverse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Whump, sirius Black whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 23:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17949338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormVandal/pseuds/poppunkpadfoot
Summary: “Moody and the Longbottoms are tied up but last I heard they were going to get here as soon as they could.” Sirius pulled a face as he spoke.“Tied up?” Lily repeated, high-pitched and too loud. “They know we’re literally in a pitched battle in a public park, yes?”The Marauders' first proper battle against Death Eaters goes horribly wrong.For HPFT's Great Collab, theme: back from the brink.





	savoir-faire

Lily hadn’t known what a war would be like before she signed up for the Order. She’d learnt about wars, obviously, in primary school — about the evacuations to the country during World War II, with the gas masks and the name tags; about the trenches in World War I, horses drowning in mud in Belgium. She’d even learnt a little about some war between England and France with archers during the Middle Ages. (She got the impression there were a lot of wars that fit that definition, but couldn’t remember anything more specific.)

She had even tried to pay attention in History of Magic, learnt about the Goblin Wars and battlefields strewn with bodies of the dead. 

So far, this war she found herself in the middle of was completely different, full of secrecy and hiding and information drops, more like her dad’s spy novels set behind the Iron Curtain. She hadn’t thought of that as a war, even though she knew it was, because “war” meant guns and battles and air raids, not dead drops and falsified papers.

It had helped this feel like less of a war. Less of a risk. 

It was finally feeling real now, though. She ducked as a curse hit a tree behind her, the smell of burnt wood reminding her, at the worst possible time, of the Bonfire Nights of her childhood, laughter and sparklers and her parents.

It was everything she lost and she was sloppy in the moment after it hit her, a curse grazing her leg, ruining her clothes but thankfully not doing any significant damage. She had no idea who had sent the curse her way, but there was no time to dwell on it — curses were still flying around her head. She raised her wand and was about to aim a Stunning Spell at a nearby Death Eater when, quite suddenly, she was yanked backwards, pulled behind the recently-hit tree.

In a mild panic, she whipped around, only to find herself face to face with Sirius. He looked a bit dishevelled (although he was somehow pulling it off) and a small cut was bleeding sluggishly on his browbone. Lily opened her mouth to say… something, probably to tell him off for scaring the shit out of her, but he spoke before she could get any words out.

“Are you okay?” he asked, crouching in front of her and peering at the smouldering rip in her trousers. “I saw you get hit — ah man, these were some of your coolest trousers, I hope you can fix them—”

“I’m fine,” she said, wincing as a curse hit the tree again. “Have you heard anything about the others? My watch smashed, I have no idea when they’re getting here.”

“Moody and the Longbottoms are tied up but last I heard they were going to get here as soon as they could.” Sirius pulled a face as he spoke.

“Tied up?” Lily repeated, high-pitched and too loud. “They know we’re literally in a pitched battle in a public park, yes?”

Sirius shrugged. “I imagine they’re in some kind of similar situation? Moody wouldn’t leave us high and dry like this without reason.”

Lily let out a little huff of frustration. While she was managing to stay relatively calm, the fact remained that they were outnumbered — not by a lot, but still, outnumbered — and most of the group already at the park were rather inexperienced. Actual trained Aurors would be a _very_ welcomed sight right then. But she knew there was nothing to be done about it — all they could do was try to hold the line and avoid any injuries until backup arrived.

“Back to it then, I guess,” she said grimly. Sirius nodded and they both left the relative safety of the tree to continue the fight. As she shot off hex after hex, she wondered who was behind the masks on the other side. Were they people she had been to school with? People she’d spent seven years in the same castle with, and they still couldn’t see her as fully human?

Was it Severus?

She knew Severus was somewhere behind a mask — she had no foolish delusions that he had seen sense — but the group here in the park was only a fraction of the Death Eaters across Britain, so she wasn’t sure he was here. She tried to shake off the thought — she couldn’t afford to get distracted again — but before she could even fully re-orient herself, her question was answered.

“Sectumsempra!” cried a very familiar voice from several metres away.

The next few moments seemed to happen in slow motion. Lily’s eyes landed on Remus, who, on the opposite side of the park, had suddenly gone still. He started to run in her direction — no, not in her direction, not quite... she followed his gaze to a spot a few steps to her right, where Sirius was standing. Where he had been standing. She barely managed to catch him as he crumpled, a growing wet patch on his torso. When she put her hand to it, her palm came back bloody.

For a moment, Remus could only stare down at Sirius in Lily’s arms, but Lily knew that even if it felt like time had stopped for them, it hadn’t for anyone else. “Remus, cover us, please,” she said, desperately trying to remember what to do. You kept pressure on the wound, right? It was a curse, so the normal sorts of healing spells wouldn’t work (Sectumsempra had already featured once in the Order’s injury list — Moody had an impressive scar on his arm).

As she pressed down on Sirius’s side, blood seeped over her fingers and Sirius groaned in pain. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m so sorry, I know it hurts, I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You trying to off me so you can steal my boyfriend?” Sirius gasped, voice barely audible over the noise of the battle. “I knew you fancied him. James was just a decoy.”

He couldn’t manage a smile to accompany his valiant attempt at a joke, the corners of his mouth merely twitching feebly, and she was horrified to see in the moonlight that he was sickly pale already. How much blood had he lost?

“It’s true,” she choked, not bothering to try for a light tone, not when the cuffs of her jumper were soaked in Sirius’s blood. “This was all a master plan to get Remus for myself. Really, the most difficult part of it was engineering the genocidal maniac twenty years before I was born, but finally it’s all coming together.”

There was a breathy noise that might have been a laugh if Sirius had the strength. His breaths were wet, now, and Lily wasn’t sure what that meant but she knew it had to be terrible. It sounded like each breath was an ordeal.

“I’m sure the others will be here soon,” she said, looking up as if that would help them come faster. She couldn’t see any movement from the trees behind them. “They’ll know what to do. Surely there’s — they saved Moody’s arm, they can fix you, we just have to get you to St Mungo’s.”

They couldn’t leave, not even if Lily were strong enough to lift Sirius and side-along with him. The remaining forces weren’t enough to hold the Death Eaters back, and both Sirius and Lily knew that if push came to shove she would have to leave him to join the fighting again. Besides, even with her lack of medical expertise, it was clear that he was nowhere near stable enough to be moved; his breathing was getting shallower by the second, and his head had lolled back against her shoulder. His eyes were still open, but out of focus — his fingers, which had been curled tightly into her jumper, suddenly went limp—

“Lily!” Remus’s desperate voice suddenly cut across her panic, and a bundle of fabric was pressed into her hands. She looked up to see him standing over them, steadily maintaining a Shield Charm even as he looked over his shoulder at her. He was only in his t-shirt — he’d handed her his cardigan, she realized, but she didn’t know what he wanted her to do, all she could do was stare at him blankly—

“You need leverage,” he said, his voice far less steady than his hand. “You need to get over him, staunch the bleeding—”

As if in a trance, Lily moved. Somehow, she managed to shift Sirius’s head off her shoulder and lay him down on the ground; she propped herself up on her knees and pressed the cardigan down hard against the wound on his abdomen. This time, there was no groan of pain. Sirius didn’t make a sound.

She carefully leant down towards his face as she maintained the pressure as best she could. There was no way she’d be able to maintain it and find a pulse, so she did the next best thing — got her face as close to his mouth as she could. Nonsensically, she was glad it was October because the nip in the air made it easy to tell he was still breathing, warm puffs of air rising from his mouth agonisingly slowly. This close, she could hear his wet, laboured breathing again. Her tears dripped onto his face as there was a noise behind them. She didn’t dare turn around — if there were more Death Eaters there was nothing to be done, and if it was their backup then they’d see they were in trouble. She couldn’t face the idea that it was just muggles and help wasn’t coming.

“Evans?” Moody said sharply and she was so relieved she almost took her weight off Sirius, remembering just in time. Before she could answer, he clearly got close enough to see the situation and called for one of the Longbottoms. 

It was Alice who knelt beside her as Moody moved to support Remus, who had barely been able to maintain the status quo, let alone gain any ground on the Death Eaters. “Good work, Lily,” she said as she did something with her wand, not looking at her. “Keep up the pressure, you’re doing well.” Lily got the impression that these were largely meaningless words, but she was nineteen and covered in her friend’s blood, and she appreciated them more than she could say.

Alice didn’t say anything else to her as she murmured over Sirius’s body (no, no, over Sirius, just Sirius), and Lily held her breath as she saw a little bit of colour come back to Sirius’s cheeks and his breath get stronger and more regular. She wasn’t sure if the bleeding had slowed at all, so she didn’t let up, but she imagined maybe it had.

“Right, I’ll side-along you both but then I need to come right back,” Alice said, looking at Lily for the first time. “They’ll know what to do when you arrive. Tell them what curse it was, answer any questions they ask, and everything will be fine.”

Lily nodded mutely. She barely noticed that she was still clutching Remus’s cardigan with a death grip, still pressing it hard against Sirius’s torso, until Alice gently pushed at one of her hands. “You can let go now,” she said kindly, though her voice was still firm enough that Lily was able to release the blood-soaked fabric.

Somehow, the two of them managed to get Sirius upright. As they turned on the spot, Remus looked back again — Lily caught a glimpse of his terrified face before the world was spinning around her and the park disappeared.

It took every ounce of her remaining strength to keep both herself and Sirius from collapsing onto the floor when they arrived at St. Mungo’s. Vaguely, she heard Alice call out for help — and then Sirius’s weight was gone from her side, and there were hands on her, turning her arms over, people speaking to her in urgent tone, asking questions that she couldn’t quite make out.

There was so much blood on her, she realized belatedly, that they thought she was injured too.

“It’s his,” she croaked out. “I’m alright, he’s — it was Sectumsempra. Please, you have to help him.”

“We will,” a Healer told her, looking her right in the eye with a serious expression. Around her, other Healers took Sirius away on a stretcher. “We’ll do everything we can. You’ve helped so much, done so well. Would you like a shower? We can give you some food, some tea, some potions if you need it — I know you said the blood is all his, but he’s being taken care of now. We can take care of you too.”

“I should get back to — Alice is already gone, there’s a battle—”

“You won’t be any help to them like this,” the Healer said firmly. “I’ve worked with Alice before, she’s excellent at what she does. Your job now is to recover so you can help with the next one.”

Lily wanted to argue, but she knew the Healer was right. She felt quite sure that if she tried to take more than a few steps, her legs would give out. A shower, food, tea, and even potions all sounded appealing in a very distant way, but she was too overwhelmed to even really consider them. She just wanted to be still until the world came back into focus.

“I’d just like to sit down, please,” she said faintly, and let the Healer help her over to one of the waiting room chairs.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” the Healer asked, and Lily shook her head. “Alright, well, let me know if you change your mind, I’ll just be over by the desk.”

Before she could walk away, Lily reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“Please,” she said, sounding every bit as exhausted as she felt. “Is he going to be okay?”

The Healer sighed quietly, but put a gentle hand on Lily’s shoulder. “I can’t make any promises,” she cautioned. “Things can take unexpected turns. But from what I saw… it seems quite likely that you and Alice saved his life. He could very well make a full recovery.”

Despite the Healer’s caution, despite her use of ‘could’, relief washed over Lily like a salve. She nodded, closed her eyes, and let out the first deep breath she’d taken since she saw Sirius collapse.

 _He’ll be okay,_ she told herself firmly. _He’s going to be okay._

The blood was beginning to dry and flake off her skin. With a sigh, she sank back in the uncomfortable plastic chair, and settled in to wait.


End file.
